Agentic Commerce: Why payment service providers need to act now

AI-driven commerce is advancing from theory to practice at a remarkable pace. Intelligent AI agents are beginning to influence how consumers discover products, evaluate choices, assemble shopping carts, and even trigger payment actions. While many envision a future where payments happen fully autonomously, today’s reality is more of a mixed model: AI systems handle most of the workflow, but humans still approve the final purchase.

This transitional stage is crucial for Payment Service Providers (PSPs). Commerce is being reshaped before the checkout moment, and payment providers need to adjust if they want to remain embedded in this upstream journey.

The Early Form of Agentic Commerce

Although the long-term direction points towards autonomous purchasing, current implementations – such as those from ChatGPT or Google Gemini – still require users to confirm the transaction. AI prepares the flow end-to-end, but the human retains the ultimate authority.

This nuance changes how payment intent is formed. The desire to buy originates from the customer, but the operational steps are executed by an automated assistant acting on their behalf.

For Payment Service Providers, this means rethinking consent validation, intent signalling, and how to support purchase flows that span multiple channels and contexts before reaching the payment initiation stage. Systems built for human-driven, browser-based journeys must now accommodate agent-led, programmatic ones.

LLMs as the new layer of intermediation

A deeper structural shift is underway. Large language models are evolving into an intermediary layer that sits between users, merchants, and Payment Service Providers. Product discovery, option comparison, recommendations, cart-building, and even checkout orchestration are increasingly influenced by LLMs.

These AI agents are becoming the new gateway – preceding the merchant’s site, the PSP’s flow, and any conventional conversion funnel. As they mature, they will shape which merchants, Payment Service Providers, and payment methods a consumer even becomes aware of.

The message is clear: Payment Service Providers that are not integrated into or compatible with this LLM-led layer risk being excluded entirely.

Merchants still operate with traditional Payment Service Provider setups

For now, merchants rely on their existing payment stacks. Some use a single Payment Service Provider, while others rely on orchestration platforms to connect to multiple PSPs. But these orchestration tools were built for classic e-commerce: websites, apps, and direct user interactions.

Agent-driven journeys disrupt these assumptions. When AI handles the purchasing path, orchestration rules must move beyond routing logic. They need to interpret agent-specific metadata, manage delegated authorization, and support payments where the consumer interaction happens outside the merchant’s environment.

Merchants will expect their Payment Service Providers – and any orchestration partners – to adapt. Those that don’t will be swapped out for ones that can.

The Risk of Losing Ground

Payment Service Providers and orchestration platforms that fail to evolve for Agentic Commerce face a long, slow decline. AI agents will naturally favor providers with agent-ready APIs, rich metadata support, and transparent consent mechanisms.

In a world where the agent decides which payment options to surface, compatibility becomes a key competitive advantage. Traditional differentiators – like checkout design or merchant-side configuration – lose their importance. What matters is seamless integration with LLM ecosystems and the ability to support dynamic, contextual payment flows.

This gap opens the door for AI-native payment solutions, which may outpace older providers.

The upside for Payment Service Providers ready to move

Despite the risks, Agentic Commerce presents a huge opportunity for PSPs that modernize. AI-driven interactions boost transaction volume and create entirely new purchase categories. PSPs can play a foundational role by offering agent identity verification, mandate handling, contextual risk checks, and smarter routing across rails.

In this semi-autonomous phase, trust is everything. Payment Service Providers are uniquely positioned to ensure agents operate securely and transparently on behalf of users. Those who succeed will strengthen their importance to both merchants and AI ecosystems.

Modernization is imperative

Capturing this opportunity requires a shift in how Payment Service Providers build and operate their technology. Agentic Commerce demands API-first systems, event-driven architecture, more expressive metadata models, and fraud tools capable of analyzing agent-like behavior instead of purely human patterns.

Older stacks will fall behind. The leaders will be those who embrace interoperability and form deep integrations with the AI platforms shaping commerce.

A moment for immediate action

The shift towards agent-led purchasing is already underway. Even at this early stage, the buying journey is changing upstream – long before the customer confirms a payment. Payment Service Providers have a limited but strategic window to evolve: upgrade their infrastructure, tap into emerging AI agent protocols, and redefine their position in this new ecosystem.

The Payment Service Providers that act now will help set the standards for semi-autonomous payments and secure a key role in this future landscape. Those who delay may watch AI-native competitors take their place.

If you’re a PSP navigating this shift, feel free to reach out to our expert Milko Filipov. valantic can help evaluate your preparedness, define the right strategy, and guide your platform towards success in an agent- and AI-first world.